


Upon mountains lost

by Sternenstaub



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Creature Jaskier | Dandelion, Drowning, Eskel is sad, First Kiss, First Meetings, Hypothermia, Kaer Morhen's Fanon Hot Springs (The Witcher), M/M, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Pre-Relationship, Well almost at least, but gets better, nobody gets hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:40:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28403376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sternenstaub/pseuds/Sternenstaub
Summary: Deep in the blue mountains, nestled like a dragon on a tower lies Kaer Morhen.Still, this was not the place he truly found peace at. No, that place lied further up the mountain, nestled above the forest line where only stone and snow were left, was a lake. Icy and beautiful, with nary a ripple on its surface, it reflected the sky and made the world look small.OrEskel visits his favorite lake, to his big surprise someone else lives there and wants to play.
Relationships: Eskel/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 15
Kudos: 206
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge: Secret Santa (TWFFSS20)





	Upon mountains lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MajorTrouble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorTrouble/gifts).



> Written for the Flash Fic secret santa challenge for major trouble! Your prompt gave me so many ideas! 
> 
> [](https://ibb.co/nm4VDbs)  
> 

Deep in the blue mountains, nestled like a dragon on a tower lies Kaer Morhen. The witcher keep is hidden behind trees and stone, sitting halfway to the mountain top is what Eskel calls his home, has to call his home. When he first entered he was in awe and terrified, after many years of training he was still not always feeling entirely comfortable in the keep. Too many memories haunted him, the laughter of recruits who later died screaming echoed through the floors at night, imprints of lives long lost were visible in between the destruction the sacking and fire had caused. Eskel still came back every winter, this was the only place where he could meet other witchers, the only place to see his family and friends, the only place where nobody stared at and whispered about him. 

Still, this was not the place he truly found peace at. No, that place lied further up the mountain, nestled above the forest line where only stone and snow were left, was a lake. Icy and beautiful, with nary a ripple on its surface, it reflected the sky and made the world look small. Eskel had never seen another witcher walk up the small path to the lake, not for fishing or hunting, it was cold and barren up there but also quiet and beautiful. 

When he had been a teen and each muscle hurt after training, he had wandered too deep into the woods and stumbled upon the lake by accident, it had been summer then but the water had been too cold to take a bath. Eskel had lied down and watched the clouds only to sit up and watch their reflection in the water. Not even birds could be heard up there and he had learned what meditation truly was long before his teachers had taught him. The peacefulness of his surroundings calming his mind.

Eskel came back to the lake many times, enjoying the quiet, talking to the reflection of the sun and the moon, pouring his heart out where he knew nobody would ever hear him.  
After Deidre had accidentally slashed him, the child he had abandoned so cruelly, who miraculously had still turned out alive and well but unable to control her powers, Eskel had hidden close to the lake for several days, refusing to tell Geralt or anyone else where he had been. His brother's didn't ask again after his first refusal. If you grew up surrounded by boys, far away from your family, you learned how important places for yourself were.

When he was on the path Eskel could only visit his lake once or twice during the winter, when the snow piled high and the winds lashed at the walls of the keep there was just no way to access the tiny path even higher up the mountain. On those days he sometimes thought he heard music from the mountaintop but Vesemir insisted it was just the wind playing with icicles and snow.

The last season on the path had been particularly hard for him and Eskel had left Kaer Morhen barely after entering it, chugging his bags into his room, hugging Geralt, who had just arrived a few days before him, and taking some bread and cheese before he ventured further up the mountain towards his lake. The other witchers knew his expression and didn't stop him.

The lake was as beautiful and unchanging as ever. A cold wind caressed Eskel's cheek, not caring about his scar or that he hadn't been able to save a small girl from a basilisk and had been stoned out of the village, that he hadn't touched another person since the last winter and that he felt unworthy to be loved. He let it pour all out, uncaring of the changing weather and slowly setting sun. Snow fell onto his face and he sneezed once when a snowflake hit his nose. That's when Eskel noticed the usually still water rippling. Small circles that grew bigger and came closer the longer he looked.  
Something fast and big must be moving under the surface, Eskel thought and grabbed his sword, thankful he had not forgotten it this time, when a hand shot out of the water and grabbed his ankle. 

Before he could react, the world turned sideways and he was submerged in water, his sword fell down uselessly behind him. The coldness pressed all the air out of his lungs in an instant and he could feel his slow heart trying to beat against the onslaught of ice and water trying to cool his body down. In instinct Eskel opened his mouth, if from the shock of being grabbed or the shockingly cold he didn't know, only that water flooded his lungs and burned through him like a knife. Under him in the water he could see the creature that had grabbed him, startlingly blue eyes looked at him from a smiling face, no snarled teeth that tried to bite him or claws tearing him apart. Instead gentle hands grabbed him, pulled him closer and hugged him to the creature's chest. It caressed his hair and said something Eskel couldn't understand, mind slowly going fuzzy from the lack of air and sudden shock, he could feel his body losing the fight against the water. 

Mere moments before he would have lost consciousness, the creature seemed to shout something, it was intelligible to him but the shock in the statement was still clear. Suddenly Eskel's body was moved and he felt his face breaching the surface once again. Sputtering and coughing he took a deep breath, feeling the ice cold air burn just as much as the water in his lungs. The creature muttered and chittered behind him, holding him still to its chest. If Eskel hadn't still been close to passing out, if his limbs hadn't already started to lock in place from the cold and strain, he might have wondered what it was, what it said and why it hadn't drowned him. But the way he felt, all he could do was take another breath and fall unconscious.

The witcher woke up in a cave, his body hurt and his clothes were dripping wet but to his surprise he didn't feel as cold anymore. The cave seemed outright warm for a place in the mountains. He looked around and saw icicles dripping water slowly to the ground at the entrance but only a few feet further in the snow melted and it felt warmer, he could almost smell the humidity of melting snow.  
Eskel groaned and tried to stand up, wondering what had happened but mostly preoccupied with getting the hell away from whatever had grabbed him and back to the keep and his brothers. However, his body didn't obey, his legs gave in under him and Eskel fell hard on his hands before he was even halfway up. 

"Oh no, oh no no, don't move." a chittering voice shouted and the witcher could hear someone approach. Before him stood a man, no that wasn't right, not a man, his skin was bright shimmering blue and his eyes looked like sapphires, the hair was a dark green that was almost brown and he was naked and had clearly male anatomy, broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs. Eskel felt himself staring at the creature in front of him. He looked like the lake itself. 

The creature approached him again, a clearly worried expression on his face. He stretched his hands out, Eskel could see webbing between his fingers that glimmered like soft spun silk or spiderwebs full of morning dew, he had long elegant hands that tried to hold Eskel's arm but the witcher flinched away. Uneery blue eyes looked at him, Eskel couldn't help but notice how long his lashes were.  
"I don't want to hurt you, please, don't move." the creature whispered, watching him intently.

"Excuse me, if I doubt that statement, you almost drowned me." Eskel coughed, voice rough from swallowing water but glad to notice his lungs were working normally again. The creature flinched away from him.  
"I didn't mean to. It's just, you looked so sad and I thought you might be happier to lose your worries for a bit? You always talk to me. I wanted to help."

"By drowning me?

"Well, how was I supposed to know you could not breath under water, or stand the cold for that matter?" The man looked at Eskel's still shivering form knowingly, the cave was warmer than the weather outside but it was far from the warmth he needed now that his limbs regained some feeling. His legs burned from the abuse in the water and his arms felt like overcooked noodles. 

Eskel looked at the creature who seemed genuinely worried and stressed, if he had wanted to hurt the witcher, he could have done so easily a hundred times over, Eskel was in no position to defend himself. "I talked to you?"

The man who looked like pearl and water lit up at the question, "All the time, it's been some years since you came more regularly but you always visit me. You didn't know I was there?" his face fell and he looked at Eskel with a pained expression, "You didn't visit me, did you?"  
Eskel could only shake his head, suddenly feeling guilty for not knowing someone had been there and waiting for him, yet another being he had only disappointed in his life.

But instead of walking away like Eskel expected, the creature smiled at him, Eskel noticed his teeth were a bit pointier than a humans and many more than one would expect, "Well, I'm Jaskier and since you've been visiting my home for decades we're friends." he declared with a bright smile. "And since we're friends, it'd be amiss for me to let you die."  
Jaskier walked closer again, waiting for Eskel to flinch or shy away but the witcher was too astounded to move. The creature took Eskel by his arms, steadying him and pulling him up with surprising strength, "Further down there's a hot spring, it might help you?" Jaskier led Eskel down, who was stumbling over his own feet but managed not to fall.

Eskel groaned when the warm water hit his sensitive skin and he sat down with clothes and all in the steaming water. It was shallow and smelled a bit like sulfur but he couldn't care about that, the only thing that mattered was the warmth flooding back into his body. "Really, you humans take a bath in rivers and lakes all the time, how was I to know the temperature mattered?" the creature muttered as he watched Eskel.

The witcher stared at the being sitting next to him, playing in the shallow water with his webbed feet and humming a tune, the longer he hummed, the more the cave seemed to echo the sound until the icicles themselves chimed in tune, creating an eery choir for his song. Eskel gasped when the whole cave seemed to be filled with a song he knew, the sound so thick he could almost feel it on his skin, he'd heard it many stormy nights, and Jaskier stopped.

"Sorry, I forgot myself." he looked away and Eskel wasn't sure if the new color in his face was what a blush looked like for him.  
"I know that sound, you've been singing from here?"  
Jaskier nodded and gestured around, "This is the only place where nobody will come for me if I truly sing." He had such a happy expression that Eskel couldn't help but smile. The witcher wondered what it was with this creature, he had almost killed him, why was he not more wary to be around him? For some reason Jaskier felt as unthreatening to him as a rabbit. 

He looked at him again, the witcher had never seen a creature quite like Jaskier before. The man noticed his curious gaze and smiled at him, "Ask away, my dear. I know so much about you, it's just fair for you to ask a few questions of your own." Eskel blushed as he remembered all the things, all the teenage angst but also the grief and shame he'd told the lake, had told Jaskier, but he looked at him without any pity or disgust and that bolstered his confidence more than he would have expected. This man already knew his lowest points and still sat next to him, smiling sweetly. Well, okay, almost sweetly, his many pointy teeth made the smile look a bit dangerous but Eskel had to admit that edge to it made his blood boil a bit as well.

"What are you?" he finally decided to ask, he didn't want to call Jaskier a creature in his mind anymore.  
"What do I look like? A kelpie? I'm a water sprite." Jaskier made a complicated gesture with his hand that reminded Eskel a bit of witcher signs and the water rippled until a small blob was flowing above it, making a perfect ball in the air. With a plop, the ball exploded right into Eskel's face and Jaskier cackled.  
"Rude." Eskel wiped the water from his face with a hand but had to smile as well. He'd never heard of these sprites before but if they were not dangerous to humans, and the witcher had long since decided that Jaskier had truly not wanted to hurt him when he pulled him under water, then a witcher compendium would likely not describe them.

"And you only live in this lake? Nowhere else?" These mountains were utterly isolated, Eskel was alone often on the path but he couldn't even imagine being on your own all your life.  
"Oh no, I'm only wintering here, the smaller rivers are frozen over then and it's a pain to travel through them, in spring the Gwenllech leads me to many places. My favorite place is the Pontar near Oxenfurt, the air is full of music and laughter and many students practice at the river. It's enchanting to listen to them." The sprite sounded wistful, Eskel knew that feeling well, he had wished he had been able to study in Oxenfurt many times himself, alas witcher were as likely to be accepted in a lecture hall as were water sprites.

Jaskier talked and hummed some more while Eskel enjoyed the warm spring until his skin felt pruny. He remembered he was still wearing very wet clothes that would freeze instantly should he venture outside and took them off, waiting for the sprite to grasp at his many scars or to just run away. What he did not expect was to feel self conscious at a suddenly blushing water sprite turning around like he'd been burned. "I, uhm, I'll just go over there and, uhm, not look your way and ogle or do anything creepy humans might not like." Jaskier stammered. Eskel, who had already expected a reaction but expected shock and disgust, chuckled over the clearly embarrassed water sprite. It warmed his heart to see Jaskier so clearly worry about Eskel's feelings while he also seemed to be attracted to him. It was a good feeling. 

Under other circumstances, had he not just almost died with his body still hurting, he might have even pursued that topic further. Like this he just told Jaskier he'd stay in the springs until his clothes seemed dry. The sprite nodded without turning around and started to hum a slow tune again, the whole cave filled with it, Eskel could almost smell the music around him. He felt himself relax and hum along when Jaskier started to add lyrics to the echoing sounds in the cave.

Eskel left several hours later but promised Jaskier to return and that they'd meet again. The sprite beamed up at him with a wide smile and approached the witcher slowly. "For good luck." he whispered and planted a small kiss right on Eskel's lips. It felt cold but also soft and incredibly tender, the witcher could feel magic tingling on his lips when Jaskier pulled away again. "Just to make sure you don't drown until we meet again." The sprite winked at him and walked into the lake.  
"I'll pop up right in that keep of yours if you don't visit me again, I know you're connected to these hot springs!" he threatened with a laugh before the water swallowed him whole. 

Eskel looked at the once again quiet lake reflecting the sky and touched his lips with two fingers. He still wasn't quite sure what had happened here but the skip his heart made at the promise of someone waiting for his return made him feel warmer than the hot springs.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully I'll find the time to write a 2nd chapter for this one day.


End file.
